all the world, would be the last
man on earth to allow it to be disturbed, let alone to plot its
ransacking, the pillage of its cases and the dispersal of their precious
contents. No man could better have exposed the absurdity of the whole
flimsy and preposterous fabrication that I had had two confederates, who
had, in my interest and at my suggestion, robbed first the _triclinium_
and then the gem-collection, after which last I had myself murdered Falco.

But his logic, his lucidity and his eloquence fell on deaf ears.
Ravillanus was unmoved. He permitted Lustralis to make a rambling and
incoherent harangue, setting forth his ridiculous contentions.

Then he passed judgment:

"I hold you all innocent save Phorbas alone. Dromo is manifestly devoted
to Phorbas and has lied in his behalf. But Dromo, apparently, was no
accomplice in the plot or in the murder. I acquit him with the rest.
Phorbas, who vilely plotted against his master, who foully murdered him, I
adjudge guilty of his death and I hereby condemn him to be kept chained in
the slaves' prison until the next day of beast-fighting in the Colosseum,
then, in the arena, to be exposed to the ferocity of the famished wild
beasts of the desert, wilderness and forest, by them to be lacerated and
torn to pieces, as he richly deserves."

Tanno and Galen could indicate their grief and sympathy only by looks and
gestures, for they dared not attempt to approach me.

Then Ravillanus called:

"Where is that barber?"

The apparitor who had gone off before the trial began produced a barber.

"Trim his hair and beard!" Ravillanus ordered. And I had to submit to
having my long locks shorn and my beard clipped close, leaving me far too
like my true former self for my comfort, since I still had hopes of
Agathemer catching the real murderers in time to save me from the doom
impending over me because of the fanaticism of Ravillanus, while I
anticipated nothing but inescapable death should I be recognized as not
Phorbas, but as Andivius Hedulio.

I was then, late in the afternoon of the Kalends of July, haled off to the
Colosseum and immured in one of the cells of the lowermost crypt, far
below the street level. To my amazement I found myself sharing the cell
with Narcissus, who had been similarly condemned to exposure to the
beasts, as the murderer of Commodus.

Together we spent five dreadful days in the darkness, dampness, chill and
foulness of that tiny cell. I found tha